JOHN BLUNSDEN (1930-2016)

John Blunsden (BRDC photo)

JOHN BLUNSDEN

The life of the man from The Times has always revolved around words and wheels. And earlier in his life John Blunsden often took a turn behind the wheel of racing cars, wringing out whatever performance they were capable of and writing about it. He pioneered motor racing track tests in the UK, and such was Blunsden's prowess in the cockpit that he sometimes went faster than the regular racers.

"I suppose I drove more than a hundred different racing cars, from Formula 1 down to modified saloons. It was sometimes nerve wracking because some of them weren't screwed together terribly well. But it also blew away the cobwebs and enabled me to resist the great temptation to become a driver on a professional basis, rather than a journalist. So I had the best of both worlds.  I had the security of an income from journalism, with the satisfaction of being able to hop into far more racing cars than most people ever had a chance to drive.

"I think it enabled me to put driving performance into context more vividly.  I think only if you've actually driven quickly in all racing conditions - wet weather, heavy traffic, and so on - can you appreciate all the elements that a driver may experience in the course of a race. Unless you've experienced that you don't really know, or you can only guess at, the problems that the driver encounters. When a driver loses a second a lap, or something like that, there are so many ways in which that can occur which has nothing to do with the driver's ability as a driver.  Anything can be happening in the car.  I think it taught me to question, to dig deeper, to establish the reason for particular elements in the changing of lap times.

"The other great advantage I had was that I could go up to a driver and put a question to him in a competitor's terms.  And they immediately opened up because they knew that they were talking to somebody who knows what is going on in the cockpit, rather than a journalist coming up to them and asking. 'Why are you suddenly two seconds a lap slower?' The answer is often terribly complicated and you can't always blame them if they turn their back on you, because there's a certain element of accusation behind those sort of questions. 

"One has to be competitive to track test properly.  Unless you're on the limit of the car, you can't really analyze what the car is doing because they'll all understeer like pigs until they're up to full performance. And it was pleasing at that time to be respected by professional drivers and, occasionally, to be able to bend the odd lap record."

Blunsden's entry into the world of speeding wheels was a result of some advice given to him by a prospective employer. After he left school he was offered work as a junior clerk in a shipping company in London. "He told me I could have the job if I wanted but he said, 'Don't accept it. As you walk out of my office, look at the expressions on the faces of all of the people working here. They're not living, they're just existing.  They're old before their years and if you come and join us you'll be one of them. So decline the job, wander down to the London docks and get yourself a job on a boat and see the world.'" 

Instead, Blunsden wandered into the editorial offices of a motoring publication, introducing himself by presenting plans he had drawn for making scale models of cars. His skills at this hobby were impressive enough to gain him employment as an editorial assistant. After doing his National Service, in Egypt with the Royal Engineers, Blunsden returned to the world of wheels, in 1950, as a salesman of second hand cars, eventually establishing his own dealership. He also wrote a motoring column for a local newspaper, The Croydon Advertiser, and when the motor trade slump badly during the Suez Crisis Blunsden took up his pen in earnest for another motoring publication, Commercial Vehicles, in 1956. He had been active in rallying and belonged to several motoring clubs, so a position as Associate Editor of a new magazine called Motoring News seemed appropriate. Blunsden was editor of that publication when he left in 1961 to become a freelancer.

He joined forces with Alan Brinton (a partnership which continues today), at first working out of offices at Brands Hatch, producing several magazines and providing editorial services, always with the accent on motor sport. In 1972 Blunsden was invited by The Times to become their Grand Prix Correspondent and he began with the Italian Grand Prix of that year, chronicling a win by Emerson Fittipaldi in his Lotus Ford in the elegant prose that is his hallmark, at least in The Times.

"I would always seek to be aware of my audience before committing myself to words. There have been times when I have simultaneously been writing for an incredible variety of media, including one of the girlie magazines such as Men Only, where I used to do a car feature. So one is aware of the audience and also the editor and his requirements. I think for a writer to have been an editor is a great advantage, and vice versa.

"I try to make what I have to say readable and interesting, bearing in mind that I'm aware that a considerable percentage of the people, particularly the people who read The Times, may start to read me with no great dedication to what I'm going to tell them. It may be that they're just trying me out in the first paragraph or two, and they're quite likely to be switched off by boredom after that.

"If I was called upon to do so as a professional journalist I believe I could write in a suitably bizarre fashion for the tabloids. I wouldn't get any sense of satisfaction out of it whatsoever, but I believe I would have the ability to do so should the need arise. Something like" 'Speed Crazy Mansell!'

"In the Formula 1 paddock it is impossible for any journalist to be everywhere at the same time, so a certain amount of sharing of information goes on. If I hear about an upcoming press conference I will tell everyone that I meet about it. In no way am I undermining my own position by doing that. But my first responsibility is to my newspaper and if I had sought to talk to somebody and received a scoop, I would guard that with a jealousy that knows no limits because it was my own initiative which caused me to be aware of that fact. If I pick out an important story somewhere in the paddock area I would do that very, very privately. 

"There is one element of it that disturbs me slightly.  There is a tendency for some journalists to go around in a group and compare notes. And I find it very difficult to understand how, bearing in mind they might be writing for competitive newspapers, how they are able to score points off each other, friends though they may be.  And I wonder at times whether in fact, deep down, they may be scared stiff of their sports editors, or their chief sub or something. I think they're sharing notes to be damned sure that they get the same story.

"Many of the Formula 1 stories seem to emanate from Italy and probably seventy five percent of them are completely false.  As a country they devote acres of space to Formula 1, probably because of the Ferrari factor.  The Ferrari factor has a lot to answer for.  Acres of space has got to be filled, and if it can't be filled with fact they'll fill it with fiction. The French style of writing is something else again. In some French race reports you'd think that the script had been orchestrated in Hollywood.

And the facts are contained somewhere hidden amongst all the shrubbery of the flowery language. I have a certain affinity with a lot of German people, I can appreciate their seriousness and their dedication.  Some of the most serious motor racing reporters, I think, are Germans.

"The tendency to focus on the personalities is one of the paradoxes of Formula 1.  It is a very, very high tech sport and achievement is based a hell of a lot on success in high tech areas. But it is financed in a way which almost demands that it appeal to a mass audience in order for the sponsors and other financiers to get their return on their investment.  Therefore in order to attract the wide audience, there has to be emphasis on the people rather than on the machinery. And it is rather sad that when you come down to the drivers, about the only group of people that the wider audience tend to relate to, by and large they're a pretty boring bunch. 

"I think the personalities in the sport are so volatile because of the huge amount of money involved. For the team principals, for every extra million dollars you manage to attract to your team, you've inherited another million dollars of responsibility to deliver the goods. And there are certain prices to be paid. I think the successful team operator has got to be far-sighted, he has got to be dedicated to perfection, and utterly intolerant of any fall off in standards by anybody in the organization.  Now that almost defines him as being a right bastard.  But I think if he is there to win, and if he is a heavily sponsored team, that's his only function, then he must do whatever it takes to win.

"There are other functions of a Grand Prix team, such as providing a vehicle for a sponsoring organization which for some reason chose to use Formula 1 racing as a useful medium for attracting their corporate clients into an environment where they can screw them for a few million dollars, in comfortable surroundings. And some of them do that, providing a weekend for customers that they're out to do monumental deals with.

"Amongst the Grand Prix regulars I think there is a great sense of community in the paddock. You'll certainly find that amongst the mechanics, the catering staff and so on, the people who actually make the paddock function. I think the mechanics are a very special breed.  They have a level of skill which you don't normally see in everyday life.  You certainly don't see it in the motor trade. The mechanics really are almost engineers in their own right.  And because they are dealing with perfection all the time, I think they all are imbued with a great sense of responsibility that's long disappeared in normal life. 

"Grand Prix people are all tremendously self-disciplined.  I don't think they stand the pace if they're not. They are expected to achieve on an almost hourly basis. And in a sense perhaps that's part of the sport's magnetism. Formula 1 also provides a kind of freedom, which I think a lot of people enjoy. OK, the cost of that freedom is those five days at each race circuit, but the freedom to be on the move is important. Even the frustrations of air travel are probably acceptable because they would far rather be sitting in an airport lounge than they would be stuck at a desk with somebody peering through the glass window and seeing what they're up to."